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[Oct 2005]
Materials Research Society Launches Entrepreneurship Challenge
MRS - the Materials Research Society (Warrendale, PA, USA) has launched the MRS Entrepreneurship Challenge, an international competition pairing students and professional materials scientists and engineers with business school students to develop concepts for materials based start-up companies. The grand prize is US$3,000 and the top three teams will each additionally receive travel funding of up to US$3,000 so that they can present their entries at the 2006 MRS Spring Meeting in San Francisco, CA, USA. The deadline for registration is 1 November 2005.
While face-to-face meetings are not discouraged, the Challenge is structured to be virtual. Materials scientists and business students from around the world are encouraged to partner and collaborate on their technology idea/business plans via 'phone or Internet. Business plans will be submitted to MRS headquarters where they will then be forwarded to a judging panel of venture capitalists who are also geographically dispersed. This approach allows for networking across and between schools and continents.
Judges for the Challenge are all experienced venture capitalists, members of the National Venture Capital Association and come from firms having at least US$50 million under active management. They will score presentations according to fairly typical venture capital investment criteria.
Networking is a major benefit of this competition. Through it, participants will be exposed not only to the 'other half' (business or technical expertise of team-mates) but venture capitalists, senior business people and corporations that might be interested in helping the proposed ideas to market.
Further details are available from the relevant MRS web pages:
www.mrs.org/entrepreneur/
ENDS